Winchester

I was surprised by what I saw up on the prairie.  I expected to see Nez Perce people, as it's all inside reservation boundaries.  Didn't see any.  Met very nice people, small town farmers, and I enjoyed the people I met.  But it surprised me that all of them were white.  I puzzled over this one. As you can tell, my US history lessons in school didn't stick too well, or at least the real implications on people's lives of the things I was learning about. At the museum in Winchester I read about the loss of tribal lands. Although the Nez Perce reservation was 750,000 acres in 1863 (their land in Lewis & Clark days was reportedly 7.5 million square miles); thirty years later the tribal landholdings were reduced to 136,000 through acquisitions made because of the Dawes Act.

from  http://definitions.uslegal.com/d/dawes-act/
"The Dawes Act of 1887 is a U.S. federal statute. The Act is also known as the Indian General Allotment Act. This Act aims at providing individual property to Indian tribes in Oklahoma. Thus the Act provides for the distribution of tribally held land to individuals. This Act puts an effort to break the tradition and culture held by tribal people by bringing in the western culture.The main functions of the Act are:

1. to civilize the native peoples; and
2. to gain use of native-American lands for non-natives.
The Burke Act amended this Act and was made ineffective in 1934."

this image was taken from the state park roadside exhibit

I don't know or understand the details, but the Dawes Act paved the way for towns like Winchester to be birthed in the middle of the reservation in the 1890's. It was built around the lumber industry.  Winchester lake was a meadow turned into a mill pond about 100 years ago. It only took about 60 years to take what had been growing for centuries until all the old growth trees were gone and the company moved out.  The state turned it into a park in the mid 1960's. That's another mystery to me.  Why didn't it go back to the Nez Perce?


The area is forever changed; but there are new trees growing now, the land is healing and it is beautiful, very beautiful.  These three ladies were enjoying their fishing at the park.